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SomeDisplayName t1_ixfp3n8 wrote

Reply to comment by DelcoWolv in This is why Pennsylvania the best state, we got Wawa and low child abuse numbers by Hardwarethewolf

Ye I'm surprised PA was at the bottom. We've got some interesting communities. I wonder how many cases go unreported.

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Suspicious_Brain1970 t1_ixg2cc0 wrote

My thoughts exactly!! I wondered if it’s underreporting.

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PoiLethe t1_ixgs845 wrote

Probably underreported and not enough nhs employees to take care of anything less than extreme neglect and physical abuse.

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Clean-Bird3449 t1_ixhhi0s wrote

Idk. My sister has a shit neighbor that keeps calling CPS and they seem to have no trouble coming over and investigating even though there's nothing to investigate.

So seems like their capable. And this is in Pittsburgh.

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[deleted] t1_ixjlf6j wrote

They didn't give a shit about me as a kid... but that does not absolve your sister of being an abusive parent.

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TheNerdNamedChuck t1_ixgbcsg wrote

me (under 18) and everyone I know who's been abused (under 18 as well) has gone without reporting it. I'm in pa. there aren't really any resources for us it seems

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Yen-sama t1_ixgih3l wrote

Yeah, exactly this. Also in PA. My dad beat the crap out of my brother and I all the time growing up. Nobody around us ever gave a fuck

I'm going to be in therapy and on meds for the rest of my life and my brother has a whole suitcase of issues he refuses to unpack. But yeah, sure, we "turned out just fine"

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MaybeMaeMaybeNot t1_ixhicqo wrote

yeah there's definitely something wrong with those PA numbers. A number of my friends got beat as kids, a bunch of mine & my brothers' friends stayed with us when their parents kicked them out under 18. A bunch of parents neglected their kids and basically didn't raise them at ALL (i'm not counting parents who just had to work a lot here, but there was a lot of that going on as well). And Lord help you if you're the child of an abusive cop, that's all I'm gunna say there. No one reports cause it doesn't do anything. The system broadly doesn't care about abused people. All my love to anyone working in CPS and trying though, that's gotta be one hard uphill battle to fight every day.

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Yen-sama t1_ixhjfmm wrote

No one also reports it because they don't see abuse as abuse, and if you're the abused kid crying out for help, the adults tell you it's not abuse and they had it much worse growing up and stop being "bad" (I have ADHD and was unmedicated my entire childhood), and threatened with worse abuse. "I'll show you abuse."

And this wasn't just my family. I know it's anecdotal, but many of my peers had this same experience and unfortunately many of them have normalized it with the same mentality of "It's not abuse. It's discipline." And "I turned out just fine." Except they didn't. But the cycle continues anyway*

Edit: for the record, I don't know anyone now who beats their kids but I do know a lot of people who are of the mindset that beating kids is healthy and should be brought back, many of these people are childless and hopefully it stays that way. If I see or hear of abuse happening, I won't hesitate to report it

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Clean-Bird3449 t1_ixihc85 wrote

If people aren't reporting, the problem isn't the number, the problem is people aren't reporting.

Can't register an abuse when no one says anything (obviously not victim shaming) also can't help when people aren't asking for it.

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marysuewashere t1_ixijogl wrote

We grew up believing the authorities and foster care were scarier than the abuse we knew. PA is rough on kids.

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Yen-sama t1_ixikseh wrote

"If you don't behave, I'm calling the cops." Was also a common threat.

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SomeDisplayName t1_ixh8g45 wrote

I'm sorry you went thru that. I wish I had an easy answer on how we get resources. Funding education and social services is top of mind, but I honestly don't have a solution

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Or0b0ur0s t1_ixhg1mg wrote

Winner. Almost every single person I know is a victim of child abuse or neglect, and only one ever had any encounters with CPS.

German stoicism and Latin-American sense of privacy, I guess, make the lie out of this. No way is child abuse remotely uncommon here, unless you're limiting it to outright injurious beating or sexual assault.

People in PA wonder why everyone they meet seems to behave like a jerk... how our parents treated us is likely why. Well, that and the relentless crushing poverty of ultra-high taxes, ultra-sparse services, ultra-low wages and shockingly high prices.

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SomeDisplayName t1_ixhht7l wrote

It's depressing, but making awareness of these issues may help change those cultural norms... Or at least get funding for better public services

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marysuewashere t1_ixijz46 wrote

And growing up breathing mill air didn't help us any.

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Or0b0ur0s t1_ixjr6z1 wrote

I guarantee you that (for today's middle-aged adults, kids of the 70s & 80s) the secondhand tobacco smoke will be a much bigger determining factor in our geriatric health.

That said, I was talking about behavior, which, AFAIK, isn't influenced by air pollution.

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Idatrvlr t1_ixgmsxk wrote

Alot or they're not listing them. Working in a school,just one rural school we probably make 30+ alone each year and most of the time nothing happens so I'd guess this isn't accurate statewide. Even prosecuted cases seem like they'd be higher

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jz20rok t1_ixg8me5 wrote

I was both surprised that PA was at the bottom AND that our child population is high and that number is still low. Props to our CPS.

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dreexel_dragoon t1_ixgyx5u wrote

Our rates of reported abuse are statistically super low, which means our CPS is likely doing a terrible job at providing resources and reporting cases. I imagine that the rural parts of the state have near zero reporting and the inner cities are underreporting on purpose or some combination of the two.

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Clean-Bird3449 t1_ixhi3l1 wrote

I think it's fair to say it's under reported in every state 🙄🙄🙄 So that's not a knock on PA. And anecdotal evidence doesn't devalue the stats.

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TheTemplarSaint t1_ixhdix3 wrote

Yeah, that’s not take away at all. It means that abuse is pretty massively underreported.

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SammieCat50 t1_ixhr81w wrote

A ton…. I went to a pediatric trauma conference 20 yrs at Temple that I’m still traumatized by ….. the speaker said at 1 point sometimes better to keep the child with the abuser instead of foster care…. & this was after a slide show of a 3 yr old girls wounds from being her skin being degloved- she was being potty trained - when she wet herself she got her ass dipped in a pot of boiling water & when her skin on her but was gone they started dipping her feet….that conference was traumatic to sit through , I still have nightmares about it

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SomeDisplayName t1_ixhrnfc wrote

I can't, nor really want to imagine some of the horrors. I wish people weren't trash garbage, especially to family

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ohmygoditsdip t1_ixh78x7 wrote

What do you mean by interesting communities? I’m confused

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SomeDisplayName t1_ixh88mf wrote

Pennsylvania is purple and there are some pretty traditional/conservative areas. Interesting in Amish, not suggesting abuse is rampant there, but not exactly the most open community to shun abuse if I had to guess.

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